Emotions for Medea and Achilles Essay

Emotions are common to all human beings and play a huge role in peoples daily lives. Every decision made has an emotion attached to it they are the impetus for all acts thought of and committed. Certain emotions are more intensely felt than others are, and they can even engulf a person without his or her knowledge. Pure and complete rage is one of those overwhelming emotions that lead the character to drastic measures as it cannot be contained. Though everyone experiences the same set of emotions, the motivations and reasons behind what men and women in the Iliad, Oedipus Rex, and the Medea do are vastly different. Since men and women deal with their emotions in such different ways, their motives for portraying rage are also dissimilar; men become enraged only to achieve glory and women are incensed to seek revenge, and only when their rage is fulfilled can they become human again.

The Iliad is a narrative that follows the rage of Achilles from its onset to its peak when he kills Hector. Achilles even tells those around him,

I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either I stay here and fightmy glory shall be everlastingif I return homemy end in death will not come to me quickly (Iliad, 9.411-416).

Achilles rage is rooted in his desire to achieve glory, and like other classic heroes (Hector, Odysseus, etc.), obtaining glory is a lifelong goal. Glory is the equivalent of life for Achilles because having glory would mean praise and remembrance for eternity for his great feats. Achilles, however, does not want any other soldiers to get the glory that he feels entitled to, by his demigod status, and knows that the Greeks cannot conquer Troy without his help in battle. Even when he speaks to Patroklos, his most beloved companion, Achilles says So you will diminish my honor. You must not, in the pride and fury of fighting, go on slaughtering the Trojans, and lead the way against Ilion, making sure that Patroklos knows to stay clear of the glory that Achilles wants for himself (Iliad, 16.90-2). Society for the ancient Greeks was based around glory for the males and thus became synonymous with immortality. Achilles rage overpowers his reason and he cannot see anything past attaining that glory; he will not succumb to the supplication of any other soldier or general because he has his mind set on achieving this glory, and only enters the war when he knows it will be most convenient for him. Going back on his stubbornness, which was a result of his unbelievable rage, would just be a sign of weakness and submission. Thus, not only does Achilles rage overtake his reason so that all he sees in front of him is his glory, but it also increases his pride tenfold so that he must follow through with his previous statements and criticisms. One can see that by the ending of the Iliad, Achilles rage has come full circle, and after he has been completely consumed by it and kills Hector, he calms down again. When Achilles gives back Hectors body to Priam, it is the first time in the entire narrative that Achilles gives in to anyones wishes but his own. This is only possible now because he has let go of his rage, having satisfied it by the number of murders he committed on the battlefield, especially that of Hector. Only when he has fully satisfied his rage and in turn achieved his glory by becoming a killing machine after Patroklos dies, can Achilles return to being human again.

In The Medea, Euripides paints a whole different picture for Medea and her rage. It seems that women become extremely enraged solely to seek revenge with a vengeance. Women tend to become overly emotional and cannot seem to tear away their emotions from their work and life, and thus everything they do has an immense emotional attachment invested in it. Medea highlights this point saying Through being a clever woman I have suffered much, for she is feared by everyone is an object of envy and ill-will to all that are in contact with her and her prophetic arts (The Medea, 293,297). Medea addresses the women of Corinth, in her enraged state, saying that women are only useful for sharing their husbands beds and being scapegoats when necessary. They are blamed because they are run by passion and emotion so they are more apt not to take the middle road and be submissive and not outspoken as she herself is. Eve the nurse notices that Medeas rage is going to end in some horrific act when she says what is moderate sounds best, also in practice is best for everyone, (The Medes, 126-7). Medea adds that women are constantly being objectified as creatures and people that do not have the will or power to say no to her marriage (The Medea, 231, 237). Her rage is born from the fact that she is deserted, a refugee, and thought nothing of by [her] husband something he won in a foreign land, and so she feels the need to break out of the boundaries set upon women, and seeks revenge on Jason (The Medea, 255-6). Her rage is just because she came away with a man who now is determined to dishonor her by replacing her with the princess of Corinth (The Medea, 32-3).

Whereas Achilles was enraged for the sole purpose of gaining glory, Medea gets incensed in order to get revenge on her deceitful husband because that is the only way she can gain the upper hand. It is inevitable that she will be infamous after killing her husband and children, but her sole purpose is to utterly ruin her husbands life. It shall no be that any man shall be glad to have injured me. Bitter I will make their marriage for them and mournful, sneers Medea when speaking to the women on Corinth, showing that her rage is rooted in her passion for revenge. For women to gain control in the ancient Greek society, they had to break out from their places as submissive housewives that would comply with any wish of their husbands, and make drastic change. They would only get control by being in control of their emotions, and thus being manipulative and cunning. Medea, however, is overwhelmed by her rage, and thus cannot gain control of the situation, and so has only one desire to end it all: revenge.

Oedipus Rex is yet another play in which the main character becomes enraged beyond salvation. Oedipus rage is similar to that of Medea and Achilles in that he cannot control his emotion, and gets overpowered by it until his own demise. It is different, however, because his rage stems from his arrogance and of course his desire to achieve glory as the king of Thebes. When Oedipus realizes that his kingdom will be wiped out if he does not catch and exile the murderer of the previous king, he begins to become crazed in his search for that person. I command all to drive him from their homes, since he is our pollution, as the oracle of Pythos God proclaimed him now to me (Oedipus Rex, 241-243). Without even thinking twice, he automatically decrees the worst of punishments he can for this murderer so that when he finds him, Oedipus can take all the credit for ridding the land of famine and problems once again. He becomes blinded by his own majestic powers, or so he thinks, and even curses his own household If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth I pray that I myself may feel my curse (Oedipus Rex, 250-1). Since he has already proved his intellectual ability once before, when he answered the sphinxs riddle, avoided being eaten by the sphinx, and became king of Thebes, his rage for more glory and more acclaim leads him to make promises and not stop at anything in order to find the killer. His quest for glory exacerbates his rage because he even insults the blind prophet Teiresias because he refuses to prophesize to Oedipus, knowing that Oedipus was the killer and will have to be exiled from his own kingdom. Even with the many warnings of Teiresias,

I say you are the murderer of the king whose murderer you seekI say that with those you love best you live in foulest shame.You are a poor wretch who taunt me with the very insults which every one soon will heap upon yourselfIt is not fate that I should be your ruin, Apollo is enough,

Oedipus does not back down from his quest and just becomes more determined to find out who the murderer is (Oedipus Rex, 363-4, 366-7, 372-4, 376-7). Until the very end, Oedipus still believes himself to be an outsider from Thebes because he was born in Corinth, and thus he feels the need to prove himself to his people as much as possible in order to legitimize his rule. Having the popular opinion on his side will help him prove himself as the best and deserving of this position as king. His rage blinds him and he cannot see the obvious signs in front of his eyes even when his wife finally does I beg you do not hunt this out I beg you, if you have any care for your own life and that is his fatal flaw (Oedipus Rex, 1060-1). After Oedipus finds out the truth, he is finally able to see what he missed all along, and in a final attempt to get his glory, he blinds himself very dramatically with Jocastas brooch. If he will not be remembered for his acts at king, maybe he will be remembered for the way he left. His rage for glory and acclaim and reverence gets him so riled up that he is blinded to his own fate. His search for this everlasting glory ruins his life on earth, and defames him in the eyes of his entire kingdom and everyone afterwards who shall know his name.

Emotions are part of being human everyone has them. The way different people choose to deal with them, and the different reasons for feeling certain emotions is what makes us all unique. There is, however, one underlying factor in the ancient Greek narratives in respect to the characters responses to rage. Women are only enraged to get revenge they have no interest in achieving glory because they know that by getting revenge they will be remembered as the women that broke out from their places in society. For women, since they are extremely emotionally invested in every endeavor of their lives, revenge for them is exacting the price for whoever has wronged them. Medea does this when she finds out about Jasons betrayal, and she is only one of the many women in ancient Greek literature whose goal is revenge. Achilles and Oedipus, on the other hand, are only shooting for one thing: glory. For them, it is all bout leaving behind a legacy for Achilles it is being the best solider there ever was, and for Oedipus it is being the greatest king to date. The rage that all these characters experience leads them to achieve these goals in their lives. Though they all feel the same emotion and are overwhelmed by it until they reach their goals, the way they plan out their actions differ between the sexes because they are after two different things. The same set of emotions in everyones lives leads to two drastically different outcomes and goals for the sexes. Men want glory and women want revenge.